Friday, 30 June 2017

Aiga Stokenberga - Stanford University

Rosa
lives in the Patio Bonito settlement on the southwestern periphery of Bogota.
Each day she travels over an hour each way to reach her workplace in a well-off
family’s home near the Central Business District. There are reasons to stay in
the neighborhood, however. One of the main among many: she rarely feels like
she is on her own here in this community of neighbors and extended family with
whom she moved here many years ago when Patio Bonito was just beginning to form.

For
households with low or unreliable incomes, informal networks of social
relationships can help increase day-to-day wellbeing and make it easier to cope
with crises. Partly for this reason, networks have been found to influence the
decisions of households to migrate from rural areas to cities and to continue
to drive their subsequent intra-urban mobility.

Taking
into account the roles and the spatial distribution of relational networks can
improve our understanding of housing consumption decisions and inform urban policies.
As I found out through early interviews with Bogota’s public officials in
charge of housing policies, the importance of personal support networks for the
quality of life of low-income households is a major influence and constraint on
their willingness to relocate and can therefore also affect the rate of uptake
and long-term economic sustainability of public housing projects.

To understand what are the
trade-offs that low-income households in Bogota are willing to make between
living near their extended family networks and improving their residential
environment along other dimensions, I implemented an original choice experiment
and a survey in two of Bogota’s low-to-medium income localities, Bosa and
Kennedy, an area where the majority of residents rely on informal or unstable
incomes and where dense informal residential settlements surround one of the
first formally planned affordable housing communities.

The choice experiment
showed that the surveyed individuals prioritize proximity to their extended
family more than accessibility to the Central Business District. As might be
expected, those who have relied on help from extended family members in a
personal or economic crisis situation have a stronger preference for living
near extended family compared to those who have not, as do those who are able
to rely on extended family ties for various resources.

New
urban realities, such as the urbanization of poverty
in developing countries, call for residential location choice explanations that
are not restricted to physical housing quality and transport costs to the
workplace but also take into account factors related to the decision-makers’
social preferences and dependencies. By combining quantitative location choice
modeling and social network analysis, my research places an important economic decision
– that of housing consumption – in a social context and expands the notion of
‘economic rationality’ by more thoroughly characterizing the livelihood
strategies of the poor.

The
empirical evidence on the high value placed on proximity to family networks can
help inform a number of urban policy decisions, for example, the choice between
in-situ slum upgrading and large-scale population resettlement and the design
and spatial location of formal affordable housing to ensure that they are able
to accommodate ‘extended households’ or at least provide good connectivity to
those parts of town where most of their new residents are likely to relocate
from.

Economic globalization pushes a variety of cities into a rapidly changing and globalized playing field. Cities of various sizes and in various locations formulate policies in order to become competitive nodes in interurban competition. Such efforts have been mainly studied in cities or regions of global importance. For example, Brenner (1999) studied locational politics and locational policies following German re-unification or Jessop and Sum (2000) analysed the policies and governance structures of Hong Kong in its attempts to become an entrepreneurial city. The strategies of smaller cities, however, have been neglected so far. The aim of our paper is to present a typology of locational policies and to apply it to two medium-sized cities – Lucerne (Switzerland) and Ulm (Germany).

For practitioners as well as scholars, there is an immense interest in the strategies of cities to position the locality in this increasingly knowledge-intensive, interurban competition. These efforts of local officials can be conceptualized as locational policies. Locational policies aim to enhance the economic competiveness of a locality by identifying, developing and exploiting the place-specific assets that are considered to be most competitive.

There is a lack of systematic research about locational policies in general because it is difficult to identify, distinguish and categorize them. Such strategies often appear in complex bundles, do not occupy a narrow policy domain and do not operate in isolation from each other (Uyarra, 2010: 132). Therefore, a relatively rich catalogue of possible locational policies is needed. In this paper, we develop an analytical framework of locational policies that is interdisciplinary informed by theories of urban studies, economic geography, and political science. Our framework consists of six categories of locational policies bringing order to the wide variety of policies that cities formulate to strengthen their competitiveness (see figure 1).

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Figure 1: The locational policies framework

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By applying this locational policies framework to the two medium-sized European cities – Ulm in Germany and Lucerne in Switzerland – we are able to illustrate the added value of the framework. We chose these cases because we want to study two comparable cities that are not an economic powerhouse of their nations. Such cities are specifically challenged to position themselves in the globalized interurban competition.

We found two very different locational policies agendas in the two cases. In Lucerne, tourism is the most important economic sector that is reflected in a lot of locational policies. Furthermore, low corporate income tax rates should attract firms to Lucerne. Ulm focuses on innovation enhancing policies in its “City of Science”, a cluster of research organizations, universities and firms. Furthermore, Ulm is positioning itself as an “Urban Micropolis” between the two metropolises Stuttgart and Munich.

Picture 1: Tourism is the most important economic sector in Lucerne – The
Kapellbrücke in Lucerne

We suggest that place-specific factors enable and constrain the formulation of locational policies and that these place-specific factors can explain these variations in the two locational policies agendas. We outline three possible venues to tentatively explain these different locational policies, namely the economic sector mix, the national tax system, and politics.

Picture 2: A building
in the Science Park Ulm

The paper shows that the locational policies framework is able to capture a wide range of policies that aim to enhance the competiveness of a city. Thus, the locational policies framework is a tool that can be used to reveal how cities face the globalized, and increasingly knowledge-intensive, interurban competition. Locational policies are formulated based on place-specific assets and constraints that can be economic, political, or geographical. The paper is thus a plea for an emphasis on such contextual variables in comparative urban research. It contributes to the scientific debate as it takes a clear stance against the somewhat deterministic perspective of a large body of literature studying city strategies in interurban competition.

References

Brenner N (1999) Globalisation as reterritorialisation: The re-scaling of urban governance in the European Union. Urban Studies 36(3): 431–451.

The growing presence of international students in the
city of Lisbon attracted my attention ten years ago, when I started my PhD on
the occupation by different social groups of the most emblematic central square
in Lisbon: Praça do Rossio. As a foreigner, I shared several apartments
with international students, at a time when the city of Lisbon was not renowned
as a tourist or student destination. I got to know a group of exchange students
that had developed a particular alternative lifestyle in the patio where
they lived. They organized several meals outside and installed improvised
benches to spend time in the patio, as well as sharing a communitarian
style of living with their Portuguese neighbours. Next year, when the students
left, the next-door Hostel bought those apartments and converted them into suites
for tourists. Replicating the students, they
installed permanent benches and even imitated
their new-age tastes in the decoration. In other words, the hostel reproduced
the students’ creative ways, making products for tourists. When I started to study
Erasmus students back in 2013, I borrowed the term ‘studentification’ to assess
the significance and impact of those populations in Lisbon. However, as an
anthropologist, it was unsettling for me to isolate the housing question from
the wide variety of practices and relations that students established within
Lisbon’s urban processes.

In the present article I discuss the applicability of
the studentification literature to other geographies other than UK’s, stressing
that the main effects on the urban form (spatial concentration, segregation and
density of student populations) are missing in the case of Lisbon. Taking the
study of Francis Collins about South Korean international students in Auckland,
I started to use ‘studentification’ in a wider sense, considering the agency of
students and their ability to reproduce their own cultural practices when
abroad. In this sense, my idea was to present three different cultures of
Erasmus students (the most significant population of international students in
Lisbon) to understand their role and involvement in different processes of
urban change.

First, I identify the party-centred practices of the
so-called ‘typical’ Erasmus students, and their participation -along with young
tourists- in the production and consumption of Lisbon’s tourism gentrification.
Then, I recognize that a group of ‘alternative’ Erasmus students who rejected a
‘typical’ Erasmus life are working as marginal gentrifiers, whose political and
aesthetic orientations lead them to the discovery of new urban territories for
consumption. Finally, there are the ‘scholar’ or hard-working Erasmus students,
who seem to be engaged with entrepreneurial activities, echoing the emphasis on
the knowledge-economy that prevails in today’s urban policies of European
capital cities.

To summarize, international students could be
considered a new class of transnational urban consumers that express
collectively a diversified repertory of practices, cultures and lifestyles.
Wealthier than the average of college students, they are relevant consumers
(and occasionally clever producers) in the travel economy (as foreigners), in lthe
eisure economy (as youth), and in the knowledge economy (as students).
Therefore, they become central actors at the core of the cognitive-cultural,
visitor-centred system of production in contemporary cities.

Friday, 9 June 2017

From popup shops and restaurants to container buildings and
gardens, there has been a growing trend in the temporary use of urban space.
This trend is celebrated by many observers, who see it as novel, progressive
and exciting, making the underused space available for activities that would
otherwise be unable to flourish, while adding colour, vitality and spontaneity
to the urban environment. Such flexibilities in the use of space may open a
door to new possibilities, but I wanted to go beyond the apparent aesthetic
excitement and understand the trend more fully, to see where it fits within the
broader context of urban processes and how it can be critically analysed.

Empty spaces are the outcome of fluctuations and crises in
capitalism, which have reached unprecedented dimensions through globalization,
and the associated technological and economic changes, as reflected in large
numbers of empty shops, offices, and housing units in different parts of the
world. The temporary use of space has been one of the key responses to this
crisis of overproduction, introducing flexibilities in the control and use of
land and property, which go past the traditional ways of rent adjustment. As I
once discussed with Kira Cochrane of the Guardian newspaper[1],
temporary spaces can be understood in contrasting ways: on the one hand making
productive use of empty spaces for a variety of locally useful activities, and
on the other hand a disguise for consumerism. Their flexibility offers new
opportunities to creative entrepreneurs as well as civil society groups and
local activities, but also normalizes the sense of precarity for these users,
while it is being transmuted into a cultural instrument of branding and
marketing, which is used profitably by large companies.

Elsewhere, I have investigated temporary parks and gardens
that turn the city into an ephemeral event[2].
My focus in this article is on the temporary use of private space. I have used
the example of Chesterfield House in Wembley, London, which provided the
opportunity for temporary use of space offered at low cost to creative
entrepreneurs, facilitated by the authorities and welcomed by the local media
and community groups. By locating the temporary use within the longer period of
property development, however, we gain a fuller picture of the initiative. In a
project of converting an empty office space to high density housing, the other
face of the temporary use of space becomes visible: an interim measure for
reducing the costs and improving the local acceptability of the impending
development. It is through this wider, mobile lens that we can see the different
sides of temporary urbanism.

The ancient Greeks called a moment that captures many
possibilities Kairos, a particular concept of time. I was interested in understanding
whether the temporary use of space reflects a broader change in the concepts
and character of time in urban society today. This is a subject I explored in a
book, Cities in Time [3](Published
by Bloomsbury in 2017), in which I have studied temporary urbanism in the context
of the philosophy of time, at the intersection of instrumental, existential and
experimental concepts of time.

How do we make sense of the current housing crisis in
London? Existing academic research and the popular press tends to tell us two things.
Frist, the introduction of the Right to Buy scheme in the 1980s by the
Conservative government that allowed council tenants to purchase their homes
from the state at a heavily subsidised rate created a shortage in public
housing. Coupled with the lack of political will to build more residential
properties in the last three decades as well as the high demand from the
national and international workers and students the rental market and property
prices have been pushed to record high levels. Second, global cities like
London have long been a playground for the wealthy. Subsequently, the
super-rich from Europe, Russia, the Middle East, and most recently, mainland
China have been purchasing luxury residential properties in prime locations
such as Kingsbridge for capital growth or to store assets in property which can
be released when it is needed.

Cranes
on London's skyline. Photo: Hang Kei Ho

While both of these observations are important they tend to
neglect the role of middle-class investors. In cities like Hong Kong many
middle-income households have been buying properties in the UK for more than
quarter of a century. Here financial literacy combined with high savings rates
and increasing anxieties about the future are driving these capital flows.

Our
research approach has been to follow the money – examining capital investments
and motives via interviews, attending property fairs, and visiting development
sites in Hong Kong, London, Aberdeen and Liverpool. Our informants included
investors, real estate directors, brokers, property developers; regional
government strategists and town planners. We also analysed marketing and
housing related materials published in both Chinese and English. Here a grounded
and linguistic insider position enabled us to learn much about these flows and understand
more about Hongkongers’ social status, anxieties and investment strategies.

We suggest that there have been three broad waves of
investment from Hong Kong to UK’s housing market. The first wave, which we call
the ‘pre-handover migration wave’ or the buy-to-live trend, began in the late
1980s when Hong Kong’s sovereignty was about to be transferred back to mainland
China in 1997. Based on the uncertain politics of Hong Kong, citizens relocated
to countries such as Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the US. However, the
1989 student protest in Tiananmen Square in particular triggered emigration to
the UK with around 50,000 families granted British citizenship under the
British Nationality (Hong Kong) Act of 1990. During this period some Hong Kong
citizens bought properties, mostly in London, with the intention of relocating.
However, the reality was that many remained in Hong Kong, with some parents buying
properties for housing their children while at university.

The second wave of investment which we identify as a
process of buying to ‘fry’. We choose this term, based on a Hong Kong
colloquialism, to describe the way in which investors speculated off-plan
properties to generate a quick profit (the frying) and the impact this made on housing
pressures in London alongside with those generated by the global super-rich. These
processes began in the early 2000s where wealthy middle class Hongkongers
sought alternative investment vehicles at the time when local banks offer
almost zero interest rates on money deposited.

The ‘post-London investment wave’, which we introduce as
the third investment pattern, started when property prices rose in London after
the credit crunch in 2009. Investors explored buy-to-let options in northern
cities including Liverpool, Manchester and Birmingham with a significant rental
yield of up to 8%.

From our work we suggest that there are two important
reasons as to why Hongkongers continue to invest in global real estate. First,
experienced through waves of financial crises and that the state pension in
Hong Kong being insignificant, they understand financial insecurity is generated
via transnational instabilities and is, to some extent, unavoidable. Thinking
like the super-rich, buying properties is a secure way to safeguard the possible
depreciation of their cash, outperform close to zero bank interest rates on
deposits and generate a regular rental income. More surprisingly perhaps, some
investors are not as wealthy as the popular media suggest, they save hard and
access loans to invest for long-term growth, sometimes with friends and family
members in ways that resemble Confucian capitalism which intergrades the
notions of familial and intergenerational loyalty, thrift and an ethic of hard
work.

The second key factor relates to the geopolitical
uncertainties surrounding Hong Kong itself and which has been impacted by
mainland China. Here we see renewed debates on issues of emigration rights and
the potential role of off-shore residential properties which may offer buyers a
sense of political stability should the political context deteriorate.

Perhaps it is also important to acknowledge here that the
current housing crisis in London is deepened by the UK government’s inability
to implement a strategy to build more affordable housing and the avoidance of
creating policies to deter non-UK citizens from buying properties. However, not
all investments lead to financial rewards as around 1,000 investors from Hong
Kong, mainland China, Taiwan and Malaysia who have invested with a total of HK$500
million (US$64 million, £52 million) have seen their properties fail to
complete or remain
unbuilt.

Finally, despite Britain’s plans to leave the European
Union that has appeared to reduce investment from other countries, capital from
Hong Kong and mainland China continues to flow into London’s real estate
market. Hong Kong investors alone have around £4.5bn
of live equity which is aimed at London. These indicators
suggest that long-term flows of capital between Hong Kong and London are
unlikely to dissipate anytime soon despite the questions that these and related
forms of investment raise about what is good for the wider population of the
destination of such investment.

About

Urban Studies is the leading interdisciplinary journal for critical urban research and issues. Since it was first published in 1964 to provide an international forum for research into the fields of urban and regional studies, the journal has expanded to encompass the increasing range of disciplines and approaches that have been brought to bear on urban and regional issues